Thanks guys for the kind words.

@RE - I keep looking at this and thinking about when I first started and I can honestly say I think I have improved by leaps and bounds. I owe much of it to this awesome community because without all the feedback and encouragement I don't know if I would have kept fighting with the tools long enough. It is wonderfully satisfying to be able to lean back and look at something you made and say, "Yeah, I like that." So, if any of you out there are frustrated by the software just keep at it, be willing to get help when you need it and you will get better.

@Lukc - I made the cities using a combination of brush, pencil, eraser, bumpmap and created the corner towers with a single pixel pencil tool with a bright color light source popped in the center. The ruins were similar but not as detailed and I used the emboss. Incidentally, Luminis is in a crater. I was probably zoomed in like 500-600% while working on those tiny cities. The Noctavia river is rough to follow since it is cutting through a jungle but it is made up of two sources from either end of the dead swamps to the north if that helps.

Personally, I think the Volcano was the toughest part for me, it has lightning going off in the plume above it and trying to get all that glowing stuff look right was a bit of a challenge. Plus, if you look for reference photos there are not many from above because, well, nobody really wants to hover over an erupting volcano to get a shot I guess.